When I first visited Sharkey's Bistro, a brand-new barbecue and burger joint in Burbank, I had a real problem with the interior. The radio was too loud, the artwork was too loud, even the silent big screen TV was too loud. The big smiles on the faces of the people working there softened me up a bit though. And when the food arrived, those issues became dim memories. Now I'm a believer.

I love L.A. You can get food from all corners of the world here. Take, for example, the two-mile stretch of Burbank Boulevard in Burbank. Here you can find two Mexican restaurants, an Italian deli, a sushi place, an American sports bar, a Cuban eatery,...

At this exact moment in time, it's hard to imagine a film starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence getting only a token theatrical release after debuting on VOD. Are there any rising stars hotter?
He starred in 2014’s highest grossing film (&...

In the normal course of things, the more spectacular a film in the theater, the likelier the home video version will be a disappointment. In the case of Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar,” however, it's quite the opposite. I'm not even vaguely...

French director Benoit Jacquot is best known for such period dramas as “Tosca” (2001), “Deep in the Woods” (2010) and “Farewell My Queen” (2012), but there are times he goes modern, and his new “3 Hearts” is one of them. Most of the central plot elements could just as easily flourish in a period setting, and they're not spectacularly new: Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy finds another girl and marries her; then he finds the first girl again, when it's too...

This recent film from director Jacob Cheung (“Cageman”) is another adaptation of the book “Bai fa mo nu chuan” by prolific wuxia novelist Laing Yusheng. The title apparently translates as something like “White Hair Demon Girl,” and by far the best known version is Ronny Yu's 1993 “Bride with White Hair,” one of the greatest films from what might be called the Golden Age of Hong Kong Cinema.
Yu focused on the romance between the title character and a...

Our waiter at Tumanyan Khinkali Factory, or TKF for short, told us there are three TKF’s in the world. One in Armenia. One in France. And now one in Glendale.
Tumanyan is a town in Northern Armenia, not far from the Georgian border. It is also the name of a beloved Armenian poet, Hovhannes Tumanyan. Khinkali, filled dumplings the size of tennis balls, are purportedly just as beloved as the poet in that part of the world. Seeing photos of the dull looking lumps, I couldn’t exactly...

The third of four films based on Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1” follows the book — or roughly the first half of the book — reasonably closely. Collins managed to come up with a logical excuse to set up the second book’s reiteration of the Games, but she also knew that a third time around would be one too many trips to the well. So “Mockingjay” abandons the Games themselves and follows...

Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom's documentary “An Honest Liar” looks at the life and work of James Randi (aka the Amazing Randi, birth name Randall James Hamilton Zwinge), professional magician and devoted exposer of paranormal claims. Randi used to show up frequently on TV in the ’70s and ’80s; he's slowed down now, 86 years old and walking with a cane.
Randi was already a renowned performer, with escape feats in the record books, when his anger over frauds duping the...

The Beatles’ “White Album,” which befuddled fans and divided critics upon its arrival in 1968 in a plain sleeve embossed with the band’s name, is a work of broad scope and meticulous detail.
Both qualities shone on Saturday at the sold-out Alex Theatre, where a crowd mostly old enough to have scored an original “White Album” bearing a serial number witnessed a reverential re-creation of the album by the Los Angeles-based collective the Wild Honey Orchestra.
PHOTOS:...

Robert Montgomery — a B-list star in the ’40s — more or less abandoned his acting career to produce and direct. His first full directing gig was a daring, if not all that aesthetically successful, experiment — an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's “Lady in the Lake” (1947), in which the camera took the literal eye-position point of view of protagonist Philip Marlowe (who he also played).
Later that year, he directed and starred in “Ride the Pink Horse,” from...